The Charlotte News
Wednesday, August 6, 1958
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa, appearing before the Senate Select Committee investigating misconduct in unions and management, testified this date, in shouting exchanges with the Senators, that he denied receiving all or any part of a payment of $17,500 to prevent a Detroit laundry industry strike in 1949. A group of laundry operators had testified the previous day before the Committee that they had put up the money and that it was turned over to a labor counselor, presently deceased. Committee counsel Robert F. Kennedy told Mr. Hoffa this date that the testimony had indicated he may have received at least part of that money, which Mr. Hoffa denied. He went on the attack at every opportunity in his second day of testimony, begun the previous day. Mr. Hoffa accused Senator Irving Ives of New York, who told Mr. Hoffa he did not seem to know what he was talking about half the time, of insinuating that he was cooperating with a previous witness who had taken the Fifth Amendment after being asked about his dealings with Mr. Hoffa. When Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts asked Mr. Hoffa why the Teamsters opposed labor legislation being sponsored by Senator Kennedy, Mr. Hoffa asked him sarcastically, "Why don't you pass the bill?"—though that precise quote does not appear in the transcript, apparently misheard by the reporter. Mr. Hoffa also snapped at Senator Sam J. Ervin of North Carolina and at Senator Carl Curtis of Nebraska. He also became involved in a sharp exchange with Committee chairman, Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, regarding whether union leaders had too much power and on several occasions had broken into the Senator's statements or questions. His attorney, Edward Bennett Williams, had begun the proceedings with a detailed accusation against the Committee, that Mr. Hoffa was being subjected to what he called a legislative trial.
We cannot help but make the comparison of Mr. Hoffa's outrageous behavior before the Committee to that of Trump's personal attorney acting as "attorney general" in a recent oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, in which that individual attacked every single Democratic Senator on the panel while refusing to answer any of their questions. Her actions were even more egregious than those of Mr. Hoffa as she is sworn to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States by virtue of her position as the chief law enforcement officer of the country. Meanwhile, the organized crime figure for whom she works, is seeking to hijack the taxpayers for 230 million dollars because of what he regards as an improper prosecution, without probable cause, a necessary fact he would have to prove for his lawsuit to survive a directed verdict, that prosecution having transpired in Florida, brought by special counsel Jack Smith in 2023, following grand jury indictment for retention of classified documents at his Florida home after the National Archives repeatedly sought a cooperative arrangement for turning over those documents, the property of the United States Government, in the face of which His Highness repeatedly lied about having turned over all of the documents he had, which was not the case. He also claims damages for the probe of Russian influence in the 2016 election helpful to Trump, which was found by the probe, without being able to connect the improper influence to Trump and his sons, despite Trump having explicitly and publicly invited the Russians at the time to release emails of Hillary Clinton which they supposedly hacked, never having in fact transpired. That probe, conducted by a Republican appointed by Trump, as with the 2023 prosecution, was of course justified by the facts. At the same time, the Justice Department which the "attorney general" is supposed to be supervising, is targeting stated enemies of His Highness, the organized crime figure for whom she works.
Mr. Hoffa, of course, eventually, in
1967, went to prison for jury tampering in a case against him in Nashville in 1962. His 13 year sentence was eventually commuted by
President Nixon in 1971
For those individuals who are sadly misled into believing that Mr. Hoffa was some kind of folk hero to the working man, one thing is quite clear, that being that he stole, or "invested" in casinos in Nevada, as he put it, money from the welfare and pension funds of the Teamsters, with which he was charged as a fiduciary with protecting for the benefit of its contributors, the rank-and-file members of the union. We do not believe that any union boss who steals from the membership is any hero of any stripe. There is, of course, speculation that he also had a hand in the assassination of President Kennedy in November, 1963.
But if you live in fairyland and believe anything the mainstream right-wing media tell you, you will believe anything, including that the 2020 election was "stolen", that Trump was improperly convicted in Manhattan for 34 felony counts of knowing fraudulent accounting entries for the purpose of concealing a crime, a campaign finance violation by not reporting payoffs for hush-money shortly before the 2016 presidential election, to keep in the vault stories for which the hush-money had been paid to kill at the National Enquirer. You will, no doubt, go on believing in fairy tales, no matter how preposterous they are. You are, therefore, likely in disbelief still because the tooth fairy never left you a silver dollar when you were a child and lost a tooth. Perhaps that is the problem. We always got our silver dollars under our pillow whenever a tooth fell out or had to be pulled by the string attached to the doorknob and the door then closed. We knew, however, that it was really our parents acting as midnight benefactor. For we did not sleep that soundly, only making pretense of same to allow them their continued belief in our childhood innocence, as they seemed to like the notion, even in the midst of the cold war. To the Trumpy-Dumpy-Doers, get over yourselves.
Speaking of whom, the prior Saturday
The News editorial page ran a piece on the Administration's
dissembling regarding making "dirty bombs" dirtier
deliberately, while professing to seek a "clean bomb", virtually free of harmful radioactive fallout. No one in the Eisenhower Administration, however, could
possibly have foreseen a nut in the White House who would post a
video generated by artificial "intelligence", or A-1 used
cars, as the Secretary of Education believes, which depicted His
Highness flying in a fighter jet, dropping another type of "dirty
bomb" on peaceful protesters at the "No Kings" rally
in Manhattan last Saturday. Meanwhile, we note that a 61-year old
woman in a town in Alabama was arrested for obscenity on the basis of
her having worn a costume to one such rally, carrying a sign reading,
"No dicktators", her costume continuing the satiric
imagery. The public dicks of the local gendarmerie, not private dicks
Because we have fallen behind, the remainder of the page and the editorial page are not summarized for this date, as notes will be sporadic on selected stories until we catch up.
Speaking of the fall of 1971, for the first time since then, we attended a Friday night football game this past Friday, which appeared to be going the way the football gods intended until a fateful fumble just as our team's player set foot on the goal line for what well may have been the winning touchdown with but 3:50 to go in the game and our team down by a field goal. The other team recovered the fumble in the end zone and that was that, foiled by the lack of a second of possession over the plane. Ah, well... The last time we attended a Friday night game was at our old high school, the one and only time we ever went back for a game, on September 17, 1971. That one, too, did not go well for the old team.
Framed Edition
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